Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to navigation apparatuses, and more particularly to a navigation apparatus that provides appropriate facility information on the basis of conditions preset by simple operations.
Description of the Related Art
In related art, a navigation apparatus searches for a route from the present position of the navigation apparatus to a specified destination, and then calculates the distance the navigation apparatus will travel along the route to the destination.
Then the obtained route and the calculated distance as well as the map are displayed on the display screen of the navigation apparatus so that they are shown to a user. In addition, the positions of gas service stations and other particular facilities are also indicated by symbols on the map along with the current position of the navigation apparatus.
Map data corresponding to a map displayed on the display screen of such a navigation apparatus is stored, for example, in one of divided storage areas of a CD-ROM, where the divided storage areas of the CD-ROM correspond to regional areas obtained by dividing the whole of the country.
In addition, various pieces of facility information are also stored in the form of part of a database in a storage device including the above CD-ROM.
Some navigation apparatuses, which make a database of various pieces of facility information to be displayed on a display screen and provide map information about the vicinity of the current position of the navigation apparatus, categorize the various pieces of information into pieces of facility information belonging to an upper category and pieces of facility information belonging to a lower category, and make a POI database using the pieces of facility information categorized into the upper category and the pieces of facility information categorized into the lower category.
The navigation apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application publication 2007-128329 is configured so that, if a user gives the navigation apparatus instructions to search for pieces of facility information about a facility belonging to the upper category when those belonging to the lower category are displayed, the pieces of the facility information belonging to the upper category are searched for and displayed.